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TiBook Wi-Fi Range Hack: New Card
eggboard writes "Apple likes the profit margins on its internal AirPort card (still $100 three years after introduction), but the Faraday cage that is the Titanium PowerBook keeps the AirPort card and the TiBook's internal antenna from achieving the same range as the plastic-cased white dual-USB iBooks. Wired News reports today on Cliff Skolnick et al's hack, which is simply to use a 200 mW PC Card coupled with OS X-compatible drivers. The cost winds up less than an AirPort Card, and you can get a model with an external antenna jack, too."
Buying a WiFi card and installing drivers is a hack? mmmmmk.
Time for some tasty Shiner Bock!
Goodness knows that Macs command a premium on their hardware, but that's because all their official Apple Hardware has been thoroughly tested and debugged against the various OSii. King Jobs rules a stern and strict kingdom, but at least you get stability.
In contrast, if you start sticking commodity PC hardware in their with poorly tested drivers, yeah, you may save a few bucks, but you lose a lot of stability, your TiBook may no longer be capable of multiday uptimes.
Here's a little experiment, go to any Mac forum and read up on hardware/software bugs, you'll find that 70% of them have been due to poorly designed third party software. Jobs may be greedy, but he also wants you have to the best, most reliable software out there.
I just installed a new video card in my machine. Can I get that written up as a hack on Slashdot? Or does it only count if I use a Mac?
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
In a new hack, area man Bob Tinklepee discovers that his iMac's power cord is "completely interchangable" with the one his PC, thus saving him the $1400 expense of replacing his iMac with a new one when the cord became frayed.
Members of online community slashdot were quick to praise the hack, but their fun was soon over when Apple filed a lawsuit against Bob for violating the DMCA.
Tough nuts, Bob!
Search the forums on Ars and you will see that a large problem with the TiBooks is that the antenna inside often shifts during transport. There is a simple fix where you find the antenna and simply push it back into the proper place and the range suddenly increases to almost iBook like quality.
p c&s=50009562&f=8300945231&m=3480972435
Wait even better, here is the thread:
http://arstechnica.infopop.net/OpenTopic/page?a=t
--- I do not moderate.
I've been using my old Lucent 802.11b PC-card in my old TiBook for some time because the internal card has such poor range.
The driver up on source forge works fine.
Fine, but how is this news?
If the new card is pumping out 200 milliwatts of radio signal as opposed to the usual 30- to 100-milliwatt range of most 802.11b cards, what is the hit on battery life?
If I'm having problems with range on the internal Airport card, I put in my PCMCIA card (in linux) and use that.
Don't usually need it at work or at school, but if I'm really having problems with signal strength, the PCMCIA card works much better. Also get much better reception for war driving. I love kismet
.:diatonic:.
I was a Mac user for many years..
[insert pic of attractive woman]
..but the terrible range of the TiBook 802.11b they had was just too much.
I bought a Windows XP based laptop and now my range is all I've ever dreamed of, I'm not locked into one company's hardware and my breath is minty fresh.
- Val
Trolling is a art,
...this story is an utter insult.
Why don't you write up something interesting (and useful to me), like how to get Wi-Fi running on my Newton.
A friend of mine found this fix on the macnet2.com message boards. I have tried it on 5 TiBooks so far and it works great. The fix involves popping out our battery and squeezing the side of the case where the serial number label is. I don't understand why it works because the antenna cable runs in the ofther direction. But it does work. I have about 4x the WiFi reception/transmission range since I fixed my TiBook.
See this is the problem with Mac fanboys is they take PR as fact. Steve Jobs doesn't care about software reliability, he cares about make profits. I'm not trying to put him down, because making profits is exactly what he should be doing. Mac's could use "commodity hardware" stably, but that would cannibalize their own hardware business. Why spend money supporting drivers from other hardware companies? So instead they give preference to their own hardware, which they should because Apple is a hardware company. Its not about stability, its about profits, which is not bad thing, but I'm sick of Apple fanboys thinking that their is some mission behind the company besides profits.
Why is it that almost every other day Wired has an article about Mac-users doing something wacky. I thought maybe it was because alot of Mac users out there were doing really interesting things like the guy who totes all the old Macs around to raves and sets up old school game LANs. But now I wonder... does Wired report every time a Mac user picks his nose? Some of their past stories were a little questionable, but this one is downright stupid. And I love the title "Mac Toters Push Wireless Bounds", wow, look at me, according to Wired I must be pushing the boundaries of my coffee, I'm ADDING SUGAR.
I love my Mac, and I enjoy reading about other Mac users and their quirks, but come on Wired, keep a sense of reality here. Wired is about CULTURE, not technology. The past articles were always about the personalities using Macs to do unique things, but this one reads like a survey review of WiFi cards out of MacAddict.
May you be touched by His Noodly Appendage. RAmen.
I'm the network admin for a school, and Apple tech support REFUSES to talk to you if you've got anything "non-stock" in the machine! What kind of crap is that? I installed a RAID 1 card in my boss's machine, (since he's already had one hard drive failure) and 6 months later his mainboard goes bad....apple wouldn't talk to me until I removed the RAID card and put back the factory hard drive.
Needless to say, that didn't fix the mainboard problem. Then to add insult to injury, Apple wouldn't send me a replacement board (like Dell and Gateway do). I had to take the thing to a local service shop! Apple services it's machines like they are microwaves, or VCRs.....ARRRGH!
Can you imagine Dell or Gateway refusing to troubleshoot problems with you because you've installed a new internal peripheral (i.e network adapter, video card, sound card...etc)?
No wonder corporate america stays away from these things....the support is awful.
-ted
Apple needs to be compatible with other wireless networks where PCs can connect. They can't simply have their own proprietary wireless standard just because it's faster. Apple isn't Microsoft: they can't pull the same kind of crap that MS does with their own proprietary standards.
Wireless gigabit doesn't exist. There is, however, 802.11a and 802.11g that offer more bandwidth. Unforunately, the market hasn't decided which of these two incompatible standards to settle on. 802.11g is slower, but backwards compatible with 802.11b. My bet is that Apple will eventually go with that one. But the market penetration of non-802.11b wireless is currently insignificant.Extreme price? The Airport card is $99 which is about $40-$50 cheaper than 3rd party 802.11b cards.
You really have no idea what you're talking about.
If you reply, do so only to what I explicitly wrote. If I didn't write it, don't assume or infer it.
I like *not* having an external antenna on my TiPB. My laptop constantly goes in and out of my school bag. I prefer not having to pay extra attention to a little peice of plastic sticking out in these and other such situations.
Besides, there are ways to improve the range of the built-in card (I get great range). This discussion thread gives some interesting info.
Boom Shanka
Plug in a Lucent / Orinco / Wavelan / this months brand name ... PCMCIA card and the Apple drivers work with it. And they all have little rubber plugs over the external antenna jacks ... No instability, no problems ... And, the cards are cheaper than the suggested cards if you look around for them. Alas Apple won't give you firmware updates for them (or the ones in the "hack") so you'll need virtual PC (or a real one) in some cases to update to the latest and greatest firmware. Sheessh ... Hack it not was. ohhhh.
- Tjp
I am in wallow with my inner money grubbing capitalistic pig. ... Oink!
I don't know very much about wireless architectures, and what is compatible with what, but will the EnGenius cards work with the Airport?
I have a TiBook and an Airport, and have found the combination almost useless. As soon as there is a *partial* wall between the laptop and the Airport, the signal fades, and then starts to drop, until it finally won't connect anymore (forget about trying to span floors!). I have to physically reset the Airport to make it work once the signal is 'gone'.
I'm not sure if the Airport is defective or what -it works fine when I have visual contact within 30 feet, but further than that, or introduce any obstructions, and all bets are off.
I've read about an invasive hack for the Airport where you add a 'signal booster', but I'm thinking that sliding in a 3rd party network card is much simpler, assuming that the drivers are stable.
Newton wavelan/wi-fi drivers
HP won't help you because you're out of warranty, IBM won't help you because they didn't make the printer OR your modem, USR says everything is fine, AOL won't help you unless you reinstall Windows from scratch and THEN install AOL 8.0...
It's called PASSING THE BUCK
Huh? Can anyone explain this? Seems flat out wrong to me, but what do I know?
-Peter
Dell does refuse to trouble shoot anything but an authorized configuration, meaning what they shipped, or someother setup that they support explicitly. It is a corporate standard, no touchie the insides....of course us server monkies never RTFM or follow the rules :)Although I've had real good luck with Dell support, their phone people are sharp and quite helpful.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
I suppose that I don't have as much an issue with the wi-fi "hacking", per se, as much as I have an issue with it being "news"...
l oriousnoise.com/l en/
Both Ellen and Apple must be doing _something_ right - Ellen apparently has a bit of a following:
http://www.ellenfeiss.net/
http://ellenfeiss.g
http://www.wemakedotcoms.com/el
Besides, I can't tell you the number of times I've had to "hack" something on linux to make it work with something that wasn't designed to work with it anyhow - wireless cards included.
Just get a lucent Orinoco card. Stick it in an apple and it shows up as an Airport Card. The airport is simply the lucent cards without the antenna.
The lucent cards also come with a jack for an external antenna.
How is sticking a pcmcia card a hack, or even newsworthy?
my business partner has an airport card in his Ti, we have a wireless net at our office,
he gets much better range than I do with my laptop and a prism chipset wnic. He can wander all around outside our building, and he never drops his connection, I on the other hand am lucky if I get reception on both floors inside the building (the ap is on the top floor, and generally on the bottom floor I don't connect, he does. So I haven't seen these problems with airport cards not getting good reception.
I just powered down and did this fix. First time I have ever got 4 bars in my living room.
Thanks pafischer!! and Thank You Slashdot.
This rocks.
Is there a HOWTO somewhere on this sugar in the coffee thing? Will it work with my system? I tried it once but I got stuck because my espresso machine only has one mouse button.
Unless you are doing point-to-point or frequency hopping. The spec sheet for the card ( from www.engeniustech.com ) says it's using DSSS, so it's not frequency hopping. How are they able to claim FCC compliance with this thing?
A lot of radio devices nowadays (Some WLAN cards included) support automatic power control - Power is automatically reduced to the minimum needed for communication.
The RF portion is probably in the 20-40% range. Either way, it's a difference of maybe 2 watts consumption vs. 1 watt consumption at the worst, which is a tiny fraction of the power consumed by most laptops these days...
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Is it possible to install any other manufacturer's cards internally within the iBook?
No. Don't try, or you will fry something.
The Apple AirPort card is a Lucent PCMCIA card, but with a different voltage feed, and pins swapped around.
It's not impossible to get a Lucent card to work in the AirPort slot, but it requires hacking up the inside of the card. It's not worth it. It's not possible at all to get other cards to work in the slot.
Just buy the Apple card. Think of the $50 extra it will cost you as the cost of having great antennas built into the screen. I'm typing this on a white iBook over AirPort, and I get amazing range.
-pmb
These parts include: optical drives, RAM, hard drives, keyboards, mice and monitors.
Other parts such as motherboards are considered far beyond the realm of user serviceability, and require taking the machine in to a tech. While there are those of us who are capable of performing such a task, I am sure that there are many more users that cannot. If I were a manufacturer who was supplying warranties on these products, I would not want users with unknown capabilities messing with delicate ESD-sensitive components on which that I would be liable for future repairs.
Apple has been more than willing to help me with crapped-out parts, but these parts were items such as a dead Superdrive and iBook power adapter. Such parts that are allowed to be replaced can be done so easily, and save Apple a lot of cash and effort and by sending the replacements via overnight, save me a crapload of time.
I tried every decent and legal way I could think of to resolve the issue w/the business before I rented the chicken suit
If the company spent the time and money to modify the Prism2/2.5/3 reference designs for 200 mW transmit, there's a good chance they improved receive sensitivity too.
Not sure about the Engenius card listed in this article, but it is a close relative of the Demarctech ReliaWave 200 mW card, which has a receive sensitivity spec that's significantly better (-96 dBm) than even Orinoco cards, which are one of the best ones receive-wise. FAR better than average Prism2 cards, which suck.
And you're also wrong about the antenna position - Look at the pictures in the article, the antenna is on the end of the card, it is NOT inside the box.
Lastly, the article mentions availability of an external antenna option for these cards - Not an option for the internal AirPort card.
These three things added up equals a solution that will blow away the internal AirPort configuration away.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Info on the Demarctech card:
z /r eliawave-rwz-200mw-prism2-5-pcmcia-card.html
http://www.demarctech.com/products/reliawave-rw
They get pretty good reviews on the NetStumbler forums.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Not all receive preamps are created equal.
Some are noisier than others. For example, you can make a cheapo preamp using a MiniCircuits MMIC for $10, it has a NF of 3-5 dB
Some of MCL's units are better, in the 2.5 dB range - A full preamp unit might cost $20 to make
You can get a 2.4 GHz preamp with a 0.5 dB nF for $100 or so.
And there are parts worse than the MCL units - Even a 5 dB NF MCL unit put in front of an Orinoco will yield significant improvements.
So in short, the people who made this card upgraded the receiver performance to match the transmitter. (This is why there is a point to those 500 mW external amps - All of them include pretty nice recieve preamps too.)
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
The forums there have some excellent antenna discussions.
I know www.fab-corp.com has some "blade" antennas that will stick on the back of a laptop, but I'm sure these suffer from some pretty nasty pattern distortion due to the display occluding half the antenna pattern. Still, they're not too cumbersome and should be an improvement.
There are a few small "desktop" antennas available at www.fab-corp.com and www.hdcom.com (I think that second URL is correct...)
Also, even a homebrew quarter-wave "toothpick" antenna (see the NS forums) is a pretty good improvement over the internal antenna of an Orinoco or similar card. Probably wouldn't be too hard to devise a way to clip it or stick it to the back of the upper edge of a laptop's display casing.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
I've had Apple overnight a HD on one occasion and on another occasion, a keyboard (coffee spill disaster). They didn't even ask for the damaged items back. All under warranty, free of charge. Apple support is O.K. in my book.
According to the Los Angeles Times, the KGB has discovered that if you hold your Powerbook sideways, you get this cool portrait view with the picture on its side. Also, check out a way to flip the fn and ctrl keys. Neat!
P.S. I have one, too.
My University uses Cisco LEAP to keep unauthorised people off their wireless network. PCs work with Cisco cards, and MacOS X 10.[12] work with internal Airport cards.
When it asks for your password, just use , and it works. Can you do this with a cheap card and drivers?
God save our Queen, and Heaven bless The Maple Leaf Forever!
I just did this and it WORKS. In my basement office I get ZERO reception, maybe one bars flickers on for a second or two every few days (I use an ethernet cable when I'm down here). After doing this little trick I'm getting three bars and a workable connection (four bars if I adjust my position - I'll have to move my desk)
From the threads on Ars it looks like you could get even better reception if you could do the same thing to the antenna on the other side. It does seem (just playing around with it right now) that it favors the side with the battery. It seems I get better reception if I rotate the book so that the side with the battery (where I just adjusted the antenna) I get better reception than if the other side (with the DVD drive) is facing the base station.
I used to work for a school system as a technician, and I had no trouble getting replacement parts, including motherboards, from Apple. Our school district signed up with AppleOrder and AppleService which allowed us to login to their website, pick which part we needed, select if it was under warranty or not (and enter serial # so they could confirm it), and Airborne Express would be there the next morning with the replacement part. It was really very quick and easy, and was much better than dealing with Gateway when we needed a fix under warranty. I'm not sure what cost, if any, there was to use it, but considering I had to order parts twice a week from them, it really was handy.
sharkyfour.com
Comment removed based on user account deletion
You need a better backpack bag. I have a Thinkpad with a Lucent card that sticks out, and I have never had an issue once I found my Tumi backpack. That bag absolutely rocks. It's the best made. Tough as iron, pockets sized to fit CDs/media, a handle on the top, a "file cabinet" pocket for docs and loose papers, and really comfortable straps.
The actual compartment that holds the laptop has a foam liner (which is removeable if you want to carry normal stuff) that protects the sides and bottom. There's about five inches in between the laptop and the top of the bag, so the Lucent card sticks up in the air and is nicely protected.
If you need a more general purpose backpack which also carries a laptop, then check out Tumi's other models.
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
I can't believe that's all it took to improve my airport signal. Not that my apt is huge, but now I get 4 bars strength everywhere inside, instead of 0-2 in the bedroom. This little "part" must have come loose in like EVERY tibook ever made. I'm speechless, stupified. I used to work for Apple, they've got fleets of Ti's out there, and noone's ever mentioned this. Must be a new "discovery". Any rate, thanks for pointing it out!
This is where I get my recommended daily allowance of "Foot in Mouth."
WiReD says the TiBook may become the "Ultimate Wardriving Machine". As an owner of a TiBook/667, let me tell you why this laptop isn't going to be the ultimate wardriving machine, at least not without a lot of work:
1) Lack of decent OS X wardriving software -- Yes, there is MacStumbler but it does not support the WirelessDriver Project yet. On top of that, it's been a while since the last release of MacStumbler. Is it still being actively developed?
2) Lack of (free) GPS hardware support and lack of GPS integration into MacStumbler.
3) Suitability for in-care use -- Let's face it, the TiBook is fragile as hell. The outer casing is easily dented. Secondly, it's not a small laptop and doesn't fit easily on the dashboard or even on the passenger seat of my Honda. To solve this, we need to come up with some kind of padded mount.
Would it ever be normal for this to appear on /.? "Oh, I just stuck a card in my iBook and after I ported drivers to it's nice... open source... UNIX... core *pauses to watch geeks salivate*, I got it slashdotted." If it weren't Apple, this wouldn't happen. And why are there now 8 different "Apple" topics? And the Aqua theme?? Thank you.
This is not a troll. Or at least it wasn't intended that way. It's just an (admittedly off-topic) observation.
Do your worst, mods.
--j
Thanks for the info. I'll look into it.
One has to wonder why no one at Apple told me about this?
-ted